n
the board and beat it with great two-handed blows of a stick. They
sang, meanwhile, one of those plaintive airs of which the Italian
peasants are fond, and which rose in indescribable pathos, pulsing
with their blows, and rhythmic with the graceful movement of their
forms. Many of the women were young,--though they were of all
ages,--and the prettiest among them was third from where we stood
upon the bridge. She caught sight of the sketch-book which one of the
travellers carried, and pointed it out to the rest, who could hardly
settle to their work to be sketched. Presently an idle baker, whose
shop adjoined the bridge, came out and leaned upon the parapet, and
bantered the girls. "They are drawing the prettiest," he said, at
which they all bridled a little; and she who knew herself to be
prettiest hung her head and rubbed furiously at the linen. Long before
the artist had finished the sketch, the lazy, good-humored crowd which
the public practice of the fine arts always attract in Italy, had
surrounded the strangers, and were applauding, commenting, comparing,
and absorbing every stroke as it was made. When the book was closed
and they walked away, a number of boys straggled after them some
spaces, inspired by a curious longing and regret, like that which
leads boys to the eager inspection of fireworks when they have gone
out. We lost them at the first turning of the street, whither the
melancholy chorus of the women's song had also followed us, and where
it died pathetically away.

In the evening we walked to the Piazza Virgiliana, the beautiful space
laid out and planted with trees by the French, at the beginning of
this century in honor of the great Mantuan poet. One of its bounds is
the shore of the lake which surrounds the city, and from which now
rose ghostly vapors on the still twilight air. Down the slow, dull
current moved one of the picturesque black boats of the Po; and
beyond, the level landscape had a pleasant desolation that recalled
the scenery of the Middle Mississippi. It might have been here in this
very water that the first-born of our first Duke of Mantua fell from
his boat while hunting water-fowl in 1550, and took a fever of which
he died only a short time after his accession to the sovereignty of
the duchy. At any rate, the fact of the accident brings me back from
lounging up and down Mantua to my grave duty of chronicler.
Francesco's father had left him in childhood to the care of his uncle,